So a few days ago, GooeyGus wondered, out loud, what the color of the inside of a green Helium/Neon laser looked like. The question interested me enough that I sacrificed one of my green HeNe's to see. Here is the pic of the result.

As you can see, the plasma inside a green is the same as any other HeNe. Green is just one of the &quot;lines&quot; of color in a HeNe. The green laser is a result of filtering. Now that was cool, but then I was left with a HeNe laser that had half of its tube removed. What do you do with that? Why, make a lamp of course.

I got a project box, some big, lead fishing weights to make it stable, some black silicone, and some Bar-B-Que paint

Here it is finished and placed on my desk. It is 15 inches tall over-all. The lighted part of the tube is 8 inches long.

Here I have re-populated&quot; the area with rocks and crystals

Here it is lit up

And from the perspective of sitting in my chair

From this angle, you can see the green laser dot on the bottom of the shelf. It is pretty cool. The colors are much more vivid in person, than my meager photographic skills can capture. The colors look more like they do in the first picture above.

Here's what the colors look like, but doesn't &quot;dazzle&quot; that much. The line in the tube is very distinct

Right now I have it hooked up to a large brick PSU. I will get a smaller PSU for the permanent set-up.

It seems like your always working on something!
Nice work dave, very original construction.
Your choice of box &amp; tube work well with the flat black paint.
Any thoughts on a safe method to display the beam through a crystal or fiber optics?

It seems like your always working on something!
Nice work dave, very original construction.
Your choice of box &amp; tube work well with the flat black paint.
Any thoughts on a safe method to display the beam through a crystal or fiber optics?

I'm usually more of a wood and stone kind of guy, but this already had so much black that it just made more sense to follow the trend.

The problem with &quot;displaying&quot; the beam is that these are very weak. Green is NOT one of the stronger color lines in the HeNe spectrum. This one puts out about 2.5mW. You don't get to visualize the beam very effectively. Maybe something like the tube used in the &quot;light sabers&quot; might work.

Quote:

Originally Posted by GooeyGus

thats gorgeous dave!! I have a melles griot 5mW tube coming my way that has more of an 'exposed' look than my uniphase tube. So I think I'll be doing something along the same lines!!

Thanks. I have a couple of tubes here with about a 4 inch exposure. Since I made this lamp, I will probably be selling them soon. I also picked up a small collection of HeNe's last week. There will end up being some (reds at least) for sale out of that as well.

Alright, I didn't even notice this before, but after the Tinkerbell was pointed out and I looked again, I have to ask:

What is the fairy lying on her back on the left doing? I'm trying to come up with a PG-13 answer, and I, well, I just haven't been able to yet. Is she supposed to be sitting up with her feet hanging off the edge of something, or...well, I don't know, what is she doing?